In many situations, one piece of tissue must be attached to another piece of tissue.
For example, an open wound or surgical incision may need to be closed. Or an injury may cause one piece of tissue (e.g., a tendon) to become detached from another piece of tissue (e.g., a bone). Or a piece of tissue (e.g., a piece of meniscal cartilage) may tear in its midst.
The traditional technique for attaching one piece of soft tissue to another piece of soft tissue has involved stitching the two pieces of tissue together using suture. However, in many circumstances such stitching can be problematic, either because of the time required to do the stitching, or the difficulty of stitching in a particular area of the body, etc.
More recently, different types of surgical fasteners have been developed for holding together two pieces of tissue. Among the fasteners which have been developed to date is the so-called T-type fastener, in which a rod-like head is perpendicularly mounted to the end of a length of flexible filament. Another of these fasteners is the so-called H-type fastener, in which rod-like heads are perpendicularly mounted to the two opposite ends of an intermediate, bridging flexible filament.
Appropriate applicator tools have also been developed for deploying such fasteners in tissue.
Examples of such T-type and H-type fasteners, and their associated applicators, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,006,747 (Kronenthal et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,238 (Ogiu et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,473 (Richards et al.); and U.S. Pat. No. 4,705,040 (Mueller et al.).
Unfortunately, applicators for deploying such T-type and H-type fasteners in tissue have not been completely satisfactory to date, for a variety of reasons.